


Two Steps Forward (One Step Back)

by Kedreeva



Series: The Telk Verse [2]
Category: Original Work, Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Backstory, Gen, Happy Ending, Hope, Injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-08 09:25:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12251556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva
Summary: Oma and Aru's backstory.





	1. Prologue: The Siita

**Author's Note:**

> Several folks who read "Hold Hands and Play Nice" requested to know more about the Telk and their culture. I decided since I already knew their backstory in detail, I would write up just how exactly Omaru ended up meeting Leonard and Pavel. Please be prepared, as Omaru had a very rough life.

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

_Light_

_Light_   _Love_

 _Warmth_ _Light_

 _Light_ _Love Warmth_ _Other_

_Telk_

_Name?_ _Who?_

 _Who?_ _Who?_ _Who?_

_Name?_

Oma

_Oma?_

Oma.

_Soft pink light             warmth_

_Coiling love and welcome_

_Oma._

Who? Name?

_Time...       A soft swirl of consideration_

_pale green understanding_

_Aru._

_Aru._

_A curl of warmth from within_

_Happiness_

Others?

 

_They wait for us._

 

* * *

 


	2. Riiya Colony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that this chapter contains the absolute worst part of Omaru's lives. There are a lot of potential triggers ahead, so please tread carefully, and ask me about anything if you need to before reading.

 

 

* * *

**The Riiya Colony**

* * *

 

 

 

 

            Oma hatches halfway between the beginning and the end of the year’s hatch, almost to the minute. Riiya’s siita is not large, nor is the colony which supplies it. Oma knows all of the one thousand one hundred and forty six Telk who have watched over them inside their eggs, sharing emotions and memories, speaking to them in soft swirls of color. It is Taa who first lifts Oma from the sticky remains of their egg shell, liquified at the moment of hatching, and takes them to the other dozen children.

            “Oma,” one greets, holding out a sticky pad, their feelers not yet divided from their palm.

            “Aru,” Oma says, reaching out to touch them. Their skin is black as pitch, the outline of who is who disappearing when they connect. Oma shivers the tips of their undivided palm in happiness.

            It does not last.

            Over the next few hours, Oma’s black begins to brighten, paling to dark grey. Their feelers begin to pull apart to form seven clusters. In time, each cluster will be able to produce different chemicals, most of them used for speech and balance, but for now it is enough that they allow Oma to manipulate objects with finer motor skills. Pol gives them toys to play with, small objects meant to strengthen their new muscles.

            Several more hours pass, and most of the children have settled into the same calm, blue-grey color as the adults tending them. Oma has not. Aru, beside them, shares the same translucent, silvery color, almost white. Two others across the group, Row and Vai, continue to pale as well. They are not the same as the others.

           The adults make fussy noises, and two of them leave.

           Oma watches them go, and guesses something bad has happened.

           Aru touches their arm, and Oma shivers.

 

* * *

 

            They are taken away from the others, away from the siita, but not to the surface of the world. Instead, they are moved further beneath it, to a place which reeks of isolation and fear. LohRai do not even look at Oma or Aru or Row or Vai, they just usher them forward into the darkness, down a winding corridor to a small cavern filled with technology Oma does not recognize. They move past it, to another hallway.

            Oma is placed in a room, alone, watches as LohRai keep Aru and the others at bay in order to close the door. Try as Oma may, palms pressed against the living stone, they have no way to open it again. There is nothing in the room, so they simply hunker down in a corner to wait.

            Time passes. Oma cannot tell how much.

            Eventually, LohRai return, and they lead Oma out of the cramped quarters and into the hall of technology. Aru is there, and Rai moves away to where Aru sits next to one of the machines. Loh moves Oma to the other, not bothering to ask them to move, just rearranging them until they are seated in the position Loh seems to want.

            “Where are we?” Oma asks softly, not pulling their palm from Loh’s grasp as Loh moves it to rest inside of a piece of the machine. Oma has known nothing except love and acceptance from the first moment of their existence; they have no reason to resist, no reason to mistrust these two, but something tells them this is not quite right. “What are you doing?”

            Loh does not answer.

            And then the pain begins.

 

* * *

 

            Days pass like this, the darkness of their confined room, followed by hours of testing. Sometimes it is needles and probes, sometimes it is blades and chemicals, sometimes it is scans and questions. They do not answer Oma’s questions. No one listens to their pleas to stop.

            They are fed bowls of thick, tasteless grain twice a day. Oma looks forward to those moments, the only time they are allowed to interact with the others locked away with them. There are sixteen of them in total, though only six in Oma’s group, none of them over ten years of age. None of them bonded- none of them _able_ to.

            “There were others,” Huy tells Oma one day. “Before.”

            “What happened to them?” Oma asks over their bowl of grain, barely daring to whisper. LohRai ignore them, as usual.

            Huy flutters their outer feelers to express ignorance. “They ended.”

            Oma shivers and looks to Aru, who looks back sadly. Oma thinks Aru must already have known that. Oma is angry, but not at Aru. This should not be happening. “Why are they doing this?” they ask Huy.

            “Because they can,” Huy says gently.

           It is the last gentle thing Oma experiences for days.

 

* * *

 

            Sar is the first of Oma’s group to end. Oma does not recognize their body, still fresh upon an exam table when Rai leads Oma into one of the testing areas. _Flayed_ does not begin to describe what has happened to Sar. Oma tries not to look at the clear, viscous blood covering the exposed muscles, the table, dripping sticky-slick into a puddle on the floor.

            “We have found you capable of producing color,” Rai tells Oma, with a gesture toward the table. Toward Sar. “Now you will do so.”

Oma’s senses scream panic at them too loudly for thoughts to win over, until Rai hisses, the sound curling up into a high, sharp note. Oma turns away from the horror just as Loh enters from the far side of the room, crossing to return to the table, to their work. To what they have done to Sar.

            “You will produce color,” Rai tells Oma again, firmly.

            Oma does not know how to tell them that they _are_. All of their colors are on, as brightly as Oma can force them to go. There is nothing more Oma can do.

            “Please,” Oma mumbles, trembling. They just want this to stop.

            Rai hisses, low and disappointed.

            This is only the beginning.

 

* * *

 

            After three months, Oma’s skin bears scars that may never heal, but they have learned to turn off several colors at once, leaving only certain ones on display. Rarely the right colors, rarely pure colors, but it is better than nothing. It is better than Sar had done, and it has kept Oma alive.

            “They do not want us,” Aru says one night. Their cells share a wall, and Oma can just barely hear when Aru speaks. “Even if we change the colors, even if we produce their chemicals, they do not want us. This is senseless.”

            Oma looks down to the long, thick incision running the length of their own forearm, extending down into the base of their feelers, still tacky with blood. There will be new tests tomorrow.

            “Sometimes I think it would be better to end, like Sar,” Aru says after another few minutes of silence.

            “No,” Oma says automatically. Oma remembers light, and love and warmth and connection. They remember acceptance and hope. It exists somewhere out there. Not here, certainly, but somewhere. “This cannot be all there is.”

            Aru does not answer. Maybe there is no answer. Maybe this _is_ all there is.

            “I will not leave you by choice,” Aru finally says, into the stillness of the night. “But sometimes, I think it would be better to end.”

            “Not yet,” Oma begs, soft and wavery. They could not stand to be alone here.

            “Not yet,” Aru agrees, but Oma is not sure they mean it.

 

* * *

 

            Pain burns down Oma’s arm as they flex two of their feelers, twining them together to activate the implant so crudely shoved beneath their skin. They know that _some_ kind of chemical is produced, but the look on Loh’s face says it is the wrong one. Again. Oma flinches, but the reprimand never comes.

            “Perhaps the implant needs tuning,” Rai suggests.

            Oma cringes, wishing that they could change colors the same way LohRai do, if only so that they could see the bright yellow of Oma’s distress. If only so they could see the burnt pivid of fear and pain. But Oma cannot communicate two thirds of the Telk language, and LohRai consider that as good as no language at all.

            “It is not the implant,” Loh says, irritation flashing red. “These things do not belong in our sectors. No amount of technology will change that.”

            “JinYuu insists,” Rai reminds Loh. “Tune the implant again.”

            Loh trills and flashes red a second time, but reaches for Oma’s arm. Oma twines all of their feelers in a desperate attempt to release the chemical they want. “Please, no, I can do it!” Oma cries, not wanting to go through tuning, not wanting to feel LohRai cutting at the base of their skull, not wanting LohRai to fish the implant out of their arm _again_. “I can be good! Let me try!”

            Oma’s pleas fall on deaf ears.

 

* * *

 

            Six tunings and nine months later, Oma succeeds. They learn how to twist their feelers just so to produce a range of chemicals, in exact order. LohRai do not praise Oma, or Aru, when Oma teaches Aru how to do it, too. At food times, Oma teaches their group how to use the implants.

            “They want us to be like them,” Row says one time.

            “We cannot be,” Aru replies, sitting so close to Oma they can feel one another’s heat. Oma wishes it was closer, but they would be separated if they touch. “We are not monsters.”

            “They say we are,” Vai says. “They say we are abominations.”

            Aru is quiet.

            “They speak untruth,” Oma tells them, quietly enough not to be overheard. “We are not abominations. We are not monsters. We do not deserve this.”

            “We must,” Vai says, “or someone would have stopped them.”

            Oma has no answer for that. They are surviving in a world that promised them love and connection, but delivered only fear and pain and isolation. They had done nothing to deserve this. They remember the other children from the siita, the ones that did not come down to this place, and wonder where they went instead.

            “If no one else will stop them,” Oma says, slow and careful, meeting Aru’s eyes, “then perhaps we must save ourselves.”

 

* * *

 

            Huy ends six months later, in an accident with too much blood.

            Vai disappears a month after that, and Oma thinks they must have ended as well.

            Three months more and Row falls asleep, and never wakes up again.

            Eventually, Aru stops eating and Oma never sleeps until their body gives out under them. Through the air slots in their shared wall, Oma talks with Aru, whispers in the dead of night. Oma tells Aru to hang on. Aru asks why they should, what is the point, and Oma has no answer. Oma begins to think perhaps ending is better, too, if there is only this torment forever.

            Loh comes for Aru late the next morning, before Oma has roused from exhausted sleep. Oma jerks awake to high, distressed screaming, and finally breaks, screaming back, demanding LohRai to let Aru go, begging Aru to fight them. Oma shreds their feelers against the door, trying to produce the chemicals needed to request Riiya remove it and let them through.

            The screaming stops abruptly, and that is worse.

            Long seconds tick by, and Oma can feel their skin shivering, muscles knotting up beneath in dread. Aru is dead. They must be, and Oma is next, and there is nothing they can do to stop it, nothing they could have done to prevent it.

            Light shines in from the entryway, and a moment later Baru appears. Oma only remembers them from the siita, one of two kin who sat long hours beside the unhatched young, singing and playing small instruments to the eggs. They are kind. They do not belong in such a horrific place.

            They touch the lock on Oma’s cell, and the door folds back into Riiya.

            “Come,” Baru says softly, one hand extended to Oma. “We will take you away from this place.”

            “Aru,” Oma says, retreating, unwilling to leave without them.

            “Aru is safe,” Baru tells them. “Pai has them. We must go quickly if we are to meet them.”

            Oma trembles, and takes Baru’s hand.


	3. The Wilds

* * *

**The Wilds**

* * *

 

 

            “You cannot stay,” Baru says, when they reach the edge of the world, where the land gives way to endless blue. Light from the morning star shatters on the sea’s restless surface. “You are not safe in Riiya.”

            “Where will we go?” Oma asks, staring out over the water. If there is another side, they cannot see it from here.

            “As far as you can,” Pai answers, their nimble feelers still stitching Aru’s flesh closed while Aru hunkers down in the white sand. Aru’s skin shines with blood. “There is a forest on the other side of the sea. Stay there. There are Telk beyond it, and they will not help you.”

            Oma watches Pai work; Pai’s feelers are coated in Aru’s blood. “Why are you?”

            “It is right,” Baru says quietly. “What they have done to you is wrong. We should have come sooner.”

            Oma does not argue. They should have. But they have come now, and that is better than not at all. “There are others,” they say instead.

            Baru sinks to the sand at Oma’s side and holds out both palms, all of their feelers stilling. Oma places their palms over Baru’s, grasping pads curling around the smooth edge, and Baru twines their feelers in comfort. “No,” Baru tells them gently. “There are no others.”

            Eyes closing, Oma buries that sorrow deep in their heart, skin muscles knotting up for only a few seconds. They do not have time to mourn. “There will be more like us.”

            Baru swirled with green acceptance. “Yes. We will protect them.”

            Oma gently extracts their feelers from Baru’s before meeting their gaze. “So will we,” they promise.

 

* * *

 

            The shore on the other side of the sea looks nothing like the shore near Riiya. Alabaster cliffs climb high into the sky, covered in a teeming mass of small, shrieking creatures. They have scales and feathers and wriggle around and over Oma and Aru, emanating friendship and excitement.

            “Jolas,” Aru concludes, drawing on some memory embedded in their mind before they hatched. The jolas drip from their arm when they lift it, and a shimmer of blue iridesces over their skin.

            Oma lets one of the soft, feathered serpents weave around their feelers, back and forth, and for the first time in years, happiness is more than just a memory.

            Oma strokes under the jola’s chin, relishing the subtle vibration of its purr. “We should stay.”

            They do.

            They swim south down the thin, white-sand beach, alongside the towering cliffs, until they find an inlet that leads to a series of caves. Tiny fish shoal in the shallows, silvery and too quick for Oma or Aru to catch, but too slow for the swarming jolas that descend upon them in the sluggish heat of the afternoon. Oma sits at the mouth of a cave with Aru, watching the jolas dive and fly until starlight sets fire to the water.

            As the morning star disappears beyond the horizon, giving way to the dark of night, Aru holds out their palm. Oma twines their feelers, warmth and peace settling in their chest as they take in the simple gesture.

            “You were right,” Aru says, the first they have spoken since reaching the shore. Oma looks over to find them staring up at the infinite, starry cosmos. “There is more for us than what we have survived.”

 

* * *

 

            The beach, while beautiful and calm, cannot sustain them for long. After only a month, they bid farewell to the affectionate jolas and swim further down the coast until the cliffs slope shallowly enough to climb.

            A great forest awaits them at the top, spindly trees reaching hundreds of feet into the air, their puffball tops wiggling about in the light of the morning star. They spend a day digging a shallow burrow in the lee of a khor bush, the broad, thick leaves and mass of huge, twisting roots giving them shelter.

            Two months later, a storm hits. The sky turns green and orange and howls down at them, energy arcing between swirling clouds and clawing toward the ground. The trees snatch up each arc before it can reach Oma and Aru, feeding off the energy and inadvertently protecting them. They nearly starve while waiting for the storm to pass, and they learn to keep reserves of food stored after that.

            A year later, after they have survived two more of the deadly storms, Aru is bitten by a piola. Oma extracts the burrowing insect from the pad of Aru’s foot, but the deadly poison lingers. One memory of another bite, shared with them so long ago, tells Oma that they can save Aru, but linista moss only grows near settlements. It only grows _inside_ settlements, and Oma cannot be seen alone.

            “You will be caught,” Aru says, barely a whisper.

            “You will end,” Oma argues. They worry the fever will end Aru before the poison can. “I must.”

            “Please,” Aru says. Oma knows they do not want to be alone. They do not want to _die_ alone. “Do not go.”

            “I must,” Oma repeats, ghosting their feelers over Aru’s chest once before leaving.

            Oma reaches the nearest settlement, Koluu, as the morning star sets. They force their colors to match the brush at the edge of the forest, blending in perfectly as they wait for the Telk milling about outside to retire to their dwellings. Only one pair of Telk will remain active overnight, at the center of the sector, in case of an emergency. The rest will torpor soon, leaving Oma in peace to fetch the moss growing at the base of every dome.

            They are afraid to return to their home afterward. Aru does not stir when Oma arrives, but they still breathe, and Oma can only hope they are not too late. They work swiftly to grind the necessary poultice, one that will treat the poison _and_ the fever. Aru does not wake when Oma applies it, but two days later comes out of torpor as if nothing had gone wrong.

            “I was afraid you would leave me,” Oma says that night, twining their feelers too tightly in Aru’s as they sit close together in their den.

            “But I did not,” Aru tells them, not seeming to mind the grip at all.

            “I left you,” Oma says, feeling ill at the memory. It does not feel real yet, having Aru alive still. It had come too close to the opposite.

            “You saved me,” Aru replies, and leans even closer against Oma’s arm, comforting. Oma can feel the tiny vibration of Aru’s purr. “You have saved me so many times, Oma.”

            Oma leans against Aru in return, and does not say anything more. It has always felt the other way around, even since the siita, with Oma taking strength from knowing Aru exists. They cannot bond the way the grey Telk do, but Oma thinks if they lost Aru, it would have the same effect.

            Oma insists on keeping treatments on hand afterward, as a precaution against such a thing. What time Oma and Aru do not spend gathering food or sleeping, they spend ranging far out into the forest. They find the various plants and creature bits that the memories shared with them in the siita tell them can cure or treat illnesses and ailments.

            Beneath the roots of their home tree, Oma begins a garden.

 

* * *

 

            “We should practice,” Oma says one afternoon, when the morning star hides behind clouds and the only sound is the lowing of a small kaltha herd in the distance. “Colors and chemicals.”

            Aru looks ill, muscles knotting under their skin. “Why?”

            “We have learned to set traps in preparation to catch food,” Oma says softly. “We have learned to keep more food than we need at once, to prepare for storms. We have built a shelter in preparation against weather. We have grown plants and taken animal parts in order to treat what would hurt us. This is another preparation.”

            “LohRai are not here. None of them are here,” Aru reminds them. They have lived in peace in the forest for years, only going near the colonies of this continent to know their whereabouts. “We do not have to try to be like them ever again.”

            Oma watches Aru, eyes ticking down the jagged scars sliced down both of their arms, over the tips of the starburst scar wrapped around the back of Aru’s neck, from the implants. Pai had rescued Aru just after Rai had installed new technology, and though the process had not killed Aru, its aftereffects had worsened ever since.

            “Pai said that the people here would not help us,” Oma told Aru softly, reaching one pad out to them, feelers loose. “But if we can be like them, perhaps they will. They might help you.”

            Aru blanches again. “You cannot read chemicals. They would know.”

            Oma forces all of their colors off, and lets only a soft shade of yellow show. “You can read them for me. I can follow what you do,” they say, letting the yellow burn orange-brown. “I cannot lose you, Aru. I will not.”

            Aru stares at Oma for long, tense heartbeats before gently placing their palm against Oma’s. Slowly, slowly, their white sinks into a pale, mint green. Oma copies immediately, as if the color had bled onto their skin from Aru, and Aru shivers the feelers closest to their grasping pads in fond exasperation.

 

* * *

 

            It takes them years more to reliably copy colors the way their memories tell them the Telk do. Oma learns to keep attention on Aru at all times, mimicking every subtle shift of color until they can do it without thinking how. Aru learns to keep their colors off without having to focus upon it, learns to change colors based on the chemicals Oma releases. Some nights they practice until they fall asleep doing so, until they can keep their colors off before even waking up fully.

            Aru is worse by the time Oma decides they must test their abilities together. The implant seated at the base of Aru’s skull has blinded them in one eye and severed the nerves of their left leg, all the way to their hip. Oma can recognize the way Aru freezes while having a hallucination. Oma worries they have already waited too long.

            The festival, when they arrive, is more crowded than anywhere Oma and Aru have ever been. The Telk number in the thousands, in the tens of thousands, spread out over the gathering grounds, all of them changing colors and throwing chemicals and talking aloud in soft, smooth voices as they trade goods and information.

            Oma has never felt so out of place, and Aru nearly loses consciousness from the overwhelming press of chemical information the farther into the mass of Telk they go. Oma turns them around to leave, and Aru collapses, drawing far too much attention.

            “You are damaged,” someone says from nearby. Oma does not see who.

            “We will go home,” Oma says, knowing better than to lie. “Aru, we must go home.”

            Aru does not respond, and there are more Telk watching as Aru’s colors begin to pale. They need to leave, but Oma cannot get Aru back on their feet.

            “Let us help you,” says the first speaker’s Bonded. “Which is your sector?”

            They will be caught. They will end here, Oma thinks, because Oma cannot remember the name of another colony and they will not return to Riiya. They will both end, and it will be Oma’s fault for bringing them here.

            “Imaar,” Aru croaks, struggling to their feet with Oma’s support. “We must go.”

            Oma lets out a shaky breath, and matches Aru’s bright shade of blue, reassuring and so very, very falsely happy. The nearby Telk look apprehensive, but they do not follow when Oma leads Aru to a less populated part of the festival, toward their real home. When Oma is sure no one watches, they head deeper into the forest.

            Unfortunately, Oma is wrong.

            Even more unfortunately, Oma does not _realize_ they are wrong until they reach their home, and see the two Telk who have followed them out of the festival and into the wilds. They look like all of the others, and Aru is too delirious from their earlier sensory overload to tell Oma if they are the two who offered help.

            “You live here,” one of them says, hesitant and soft.

            “Yes,” Oma says. There is no hiding the evidence now. Aru has nearly lost all control of their colors, skin a pale, pale pink that might only be the reflection of the starlight through houla tree leaves.

            The two Telk stare for too long, colors shifting in shocky patterns, and Oma can only assume what chemicals pass between them. Oma stays put, practically wrapped around Aru, ready to defend them both if they must, desperately hoping these two will just go away.

            “Your Bonded is damaged,” the first speaker says.

            “Yes,” Oma says again, trembling now. Even so far away in time and distance, they can feel LohRai’s shadow in those words.

            “You are alone,” they say. “You and your Bonded are alone here.”

            Aru’s colors have gone black under Oma’s palms. “Yes,” Oma agrees.

            The first Telk looks to the second, and then back to Oma. “We can help you. Come home with us.”

            Oma swirls orange and brown into their yellow, afraid. They cannot go into a colony without being discovered. “Your leaders will not allow us in.”

            The first studies Oma for another second, before shifting into a reassuring blue-green. “We _are_ the leaders,” they say, feelers wiggling. “My name is Yew, and this is Hara. We lead Koluu, and we will let you in. We will care for you, if Imaar could not.”

            Hara approaches Oma. lifting Aru’s limp body away from them, and Oma breaks, overwhelmed by the relief flooding their system. When Yew scoops Oma into their arms as well, Oma offers no resistance.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some familiar faces appear! I'm trying my best to write as much of this as possible before Nano starts, and I think I might just do it!


End file.
